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Chris Pine talks about playing Jack Ryan

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Chris Pineis the new Jack Ryan inKenneth Branagh's upcoming action thriller Jack Ryan: Shadow
Recruit, based on the popular Tom
Clancy novels. Pine's Jack Ryan is a CIA
analyst who unwittingly discovers a Russian terrorist plot and is sent into the
field to continue the investigation.

Chris Pine, is the fourth
actor to take on the titular role of the CIA Operative (following in the
footsteps of Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben
Affleck), The film co-stars Keira
Knightley, Kevin Costner and Kenneth Branagh.

His
films include Just My Luck, Blind Dating,
Smokin’ Aces, This Means War, People Like Us,Rise of the Guardians and Star
Trek Into Darkness.

You’re
following in the shoes of Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Alec Baldwin. How did
you make the role your own?

I
think I make the part my own simply by the fact that I’m in it so there are
certain things that I bring to it that are different. I watched the films and
enjoyed them growing up and I really like the spy genre. What I loved about
Harrison is that he has an intrinsic humility to him that I think he brings to
everything he does, whether it’s Clear
And Present Danger or Patriot Games,
where Anne Archer drives a Porsche and he has a Volkswagen Jetta and he has a
tweed jacket that he seems to have had forever and I just loved that. I did
this movie called This Means War that
was all about a man in great suits who wants to be the James Bond type of spy
and if you see some of the suits I wear in this you’ll know that Jack Ryan is
not a man interested in threads – he would much rather go to a first edition
book store. So I always loved that humility of Harrison and with Alec Baldwin I
just love that kind of sharp, incisiveness he brought to it. He was like a
razor in terms of his ability to cut up information and put it together and
process it. And I loved that in The Hunt
for Red October, in order to avert nuclear catastrophe, he had to figure
out the mind of one man and it all came down to this man missing his wife. So
there was a psychology to it I really liked. And I think what sets our film
apart is that there is great action in this film and when Ken and I started, we
talked about how often in films you see so much death and mayhem and violence
and no one ever really pays attention to it – you know that a bad guy dies but
he maybe also had a wife and a kid but you don’t know his background. So we
thought it would be interesting to see the face of that part of the experience.
What happens when an everyman is thrown into an extraordinary situation where
he has to do things that you wouldn’t necessarily do on any given day and how
does he deal with seeing death? How does he deal with inflicting violence? How
does he deal with potentially killing someone? And I thought that was really
interesting because I can’t recall where you see that happen in films of this
genre; where you see people killed but you never see the effects of it. So I
like that human aspect it has.

How
did you prepare for your role?

I
came to the UK last year before we started shooting and Ken organized some
things for me. We went to the American Embassy in London and we had this little
spy game to do, which was a lot of fun.

What
did you have to do?

It’s
known as a ‘drop’ in spy parlance and the whole thing was like being at spy
camp. Ken was really proud of himself and he was like, ‘I’ve organized a little
something for you Chris...’ and then we ended up at the American Embassy and
the security team there were in on the plan. I had to find the people that were
watching me and there was a drop at one point where I had to pick up a memory
stick and do all kinds of stuff. It was a fun but as fun as it was even in that
scenario, when you know that there are people out there watching you, your
senses are immediately heightened and your heart starts to race.

Did
it give you a taste of what it would be like to work for the CIA?

Yeah,
and it certainly did that (laughs). And I obviously wasn’t in any danger so I
can only imagine what people, real operatives, have to deal with.

Did
you talk to any real CIA agents?

I
talked with a guy there who was the head of security at the Embassy in London,
which is the biggest Embassy in Europe, and his stories about being in Beirut
were just crazy. And it’s often less about the stories but more about the
energy you get from people like that. I talked to Bob Baer and he’s written a
couple of books and he was in the CIA and being around someone like that was
really helpful and his stories are great, too. It’s all about the energy that
people put out in the room.

Jack
has been injured at the start the story. Did you do any research into that?

Jack
Ryan has suffered a major back injury and he has to recuperate I went to a
facility outside of London where veterans are recuperating from major traumatic
events from Afghanistan and Iraq and I got to talk to some of them. And again,
we were bringing it back to the facts – if you are in a helicopter crash, what
does that mean? It’s major and traumatic and if you see violence and death and
all sorts of horrible stuff, that has an effect on you. And it’s the idea that
this is a man who is wounded, like any of us would be, psychologically as well
as physically, but he still wants to serve. And I met many people who were
gravely wounded and still wanted to serve. And I wanted to get my head around
that because I am certainly not that courageous. I wanted to understand what
that was all about and that was a real eye opener.

Does
it make a difference that Kenneth Branagh is also acting as well as directing
Jack Ryan?

What’s
nice about working with an actor/ director that there is an understanding of
the experience of the actors. Ken knows intrinsically what you are going
through and what you may need at any given moment because he’s been there
himself. And there’s a level of communication that’s better and easier often
than with someone who hasn’t been an actor. Ken knows the experience and how it
needs to be said to get across for me to achieve what he is looking for in a
scene. And then he also brought things to it that was purely down to his talent
as a director. This is a big action film and we were shooting relatively easy
11, 12-hour days and that just comes from Ken not over shooting it. Ken would
have three cameras and he would block it off and we’d finish a three or four
page scene in a day or less, which doesn’t happen very often and I like that.
So I think with Ken, a lot of it is the way he communicates and a lot of it is has
to do with his talent as a director.

Were
you a fan of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels growing up?

I
was born a fan of the films, that’s what brought me into the fold, and then I
read some of his books.

And did you get the chance to meet Tom Clancy
before his passing?

Sadly
I didn’t know the man at all but I’m playing a character that he created that I
love and I’ve loved for many years and I’m thankful that I have this
opportunity. I wish I’d had the chance to meet him. My thoughts go out to his
family.

How
close do you think your character, Jack Ryan, is to reality?

We
talked to people like Bob Baer who was an analyst with the agency for a while,
and not only are the tricks and gadgets we use in the film very real but that
this kind of thing – the financial terrorism that is a big part of our story –
is very current. As we all know, we are in a new world where warfare and terror
takes on many, many different forms and the financial system is so complicated
as it is that you would need a PhD to figure out what is going on. But Jack has
one. It’s really scary. It starts with a bank and goes beneath a bank and I
think it is based in reality but hopefully this won’t happen.

You
could argue that a good spy thriller has to reflect the time in which it is
made and the Jack Ryan books have changed according to the time. Was it
important for you that the film reflects the geo-political reality of our
times?

It
was of the utmost importance to me and I can’t tell you how many conversations
I had with everyone involved. For me, the question always came down to what it
meant to be a patriot because Jack is a patriot of sorts. And my contention was
that in a post 9/11, era the world is much grayer than it was 25, 30 years ago. With the
Cold War, there was a kind of easy black and white, much in the same way we
view World War II, there was good and there was bad and it made life a lot
easier. But it was different after 9/11 and I wasn’t interested in making a
film that was about espousing the ideals of America or that America was great.
For me, it was like watching what Harrison was about when he did the role, that
this wasn’t a man that was tied to ideology – this is a man with a great
internal moral compass who knew what right and wrong was. It’s a man who would
stand up for what was right and I love that. I love the fact that he has an
internal flag, that’s what he goes by, and if it meant disobeying, he would do
that. And I always think that’s a definition of a hero that we all connect to
that more than anything else. Once I found an inroad into the character, it
made a lot of sense to me and I thought if we could make a film about an
American spy post 9/11, a spy who is a good man but conflicted about what he
has to do and he wanted to make sure he was serving on his own terms – I could
understand that and I felt comfortable with it.

The
spy genre has produced some great films and some enduring characters – James
Bond, Jason Bourne for example – what will Jack Ryan bring to the audience?

I
would say that James Bond has Q, Jason Bourne has his fists and Jack Ryan has
his mind. And it’s about a regular man, albeit a smart man, who is way more
comfortable in the world of his mind, in the world of the intellectual puzzles
that he likes to figure out, who finds himself inextricably pulled towards the
front line. Jack Ryan has a great amount of intellect and he has to find his
way out of very dangerous physical and intellectual situations. It’s about a
man who has to deal with all of this stuff that we know to be a part of the spy
genre like death and intrigue and it’s about how a man like that deals with
committing violence and protecting the people that he loves and all of that
affects who he is and he doesn’t do it easily.